Monday, November 21, 2011

Canada sucks

The only real advantages Canadians have over Americans is publicly funded health care, and a physically larger country. We don't even use like 75% of the land we have, so the latter advantage doesn't really matter. One of the major disadvantages we have is almost anything to do with media. First of all, we do not have access to things like Hulu, a good version of Netflix, and any other legitimate streaming service. This goes for movies, TV shows, music (such as Pandora radio), and whatnot.

We get Netflix here, but it is something I only use if I feel the need to watch something crappy. The good stuff that gets put on Netflix doesn't stay up. If there's a TV show on there you like, you better watch it fast. Some might argue that you can download this stuff, which I do of course, but sometimes it's nice not to have to scour over the internet to find something, especially when there's the constant looming threat that something you download might not be quite what you were looking for. As well, it's nice to sometimes have some external inspiration. Sometimes you don't know what to watch, and browsing a selection of stuff can help you choose. Basically, our version of Netflix is the retarded younger brother of American Netflix.

One of the things that really bugs me is the denial of access to stuff like Hulu and Pandora radio. I believe that if I had access to both of those services, I could entertain myself for decades. I would even be willing to pay for a subscription. But of course, Canadians are shafted. It's the same as the story with Netflix, except Pandora and Hulu don't even have little retarded brothers.

Another theme as of late is the fact that Canadians are denied access to most of the cool promotions I have seen. For example, Doritos and Mt. Dew have a promotion on for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (which is my new addiction of course). You can collect codes from these products and use them towards double XP time in the game. You can also win prizes and are entered into draws with each code you enter. In Canada, we have Doritos and Mt. Dew, and we certainly have Call of Duty. Why the fuck can't they just slightly expand the shipping radius of these specially marked packages of snacks? There is no bullshit excuses that have to do with media rights (as there are with music, movie and TV streaming), so what the fuck? Sometimes I wonder if they do this shit on purpose just to Candians off. I can't even begin to count the times where I have gone to sign up for some cool website or contest, only to find that they need your address (for whatever reason), but the form only takes American info. Isn't the point of contests and whatnot to promote something? Would it then not make sense to expose a wider variety of people to your product, therefore increasing your potential market? It's not like these are things that Canada doesn't have, they just choose to ignore the fact that Canadians buy things, or we just get a half assed, watered down version of something (e.g. Netflix, the Wal Mart website, Amazon.ca, etc.)

Don't even get me started on telecommunications or media access. During my ranting against the media situation in Canada, I am relatively aware of the source of these problems. All the crap stems from the fact that pieces of shit greedy cocksuckers like Rogers and Bell want to keep their gigantic (almost complete) hold on the Canadian media market. They want to be the ones responsible for telecommunications in Canada because if they do, they have more freedom to continually gouge their customers, and compromise any chance that Canada might catch up to the rest of the world in standards of communication. Basically, we pay out our asses for shitty and minimal services. I briefly looked at the AT&T site (which is sort of the American version of Rogers), and their minimum package (3 Mbps) is around USD $20 (so about $20.75 CAD). Rogers in Canada, on the other hand, charges $38 for the same thing. I know this is far from a scientific evaluation, but the difference is almost double. They don't have to charge this much, since the costs of creating bandwidth are extremely low compared to the mark up. But since it's Rogers, they need to squeeze every penny they can from you. Bell is no better. These are the companies that are holding us back from media liberation. The fight over UBB (Usage Based Billing) was, of course, because companies like Rogers and Bell wanted to implement it so that their competitors couldn't offer unlimited plans. If they did, they might get the leg up since no one wants to pay more just because they use it more. Personally, I am a heavy internet user. If there was UBB in effect, I would likely max out the counter every month. That is unless I pay like $100 a month for a large amount of bandwidth. It's fucking ridiculous the lengths large corporations will go to make sure their CEOs can live cushy lifestyles and wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills.

I could go on about how Canada also sucks in terms of fast food, products like Cherry Coke, and the fact that everything is American centric in general (shit, they even have better weather than we do). But I will not since that would take a while. But on the upside, at least Canada doesn't have as many religious, hypocritical nutjobs. But the health care and and the generally more polite people will keep me from bolting to California for now. I just wish the country had the balls to stand up to the Rogers and Bell cocksuckers.

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